Migration has an impact on both people and landscape. Border Cantos, a unique collaborationbetween American photographer Richard Misrach and Mexican composer Guillermo Galindo, harnesses the power of art to explore, share, and humanize the complex issues surrounding the borderlands between the United States and Mexico. The artists created works of photography, sculpture, and sound that document and transform artifacts from the border. Misrach’s large-scale photographs, along with inventory-like grids of smaller photographs, highlight issues surrounding immigration and how they have affected regions and people. Responding to these photographs, Galindo fashioned sound-generating sculptures from items Misrach collected from the border, such as water bottles, Border Patrol “drag tires,” spent shotgun shells, ladders, and sections of the border wall itself. The sounds they produce give voices to people through the personal belongings they have left behind.

“Human Nature: Sonic Botany” Guillermo Galindo’s scores part of the “Visual Voyages: Images of Latin American Nature”
@ The Huntington

Sep 16 2017 @ 12:00 pm – Jan 8 2018 @ 1:00 pm

Artist and experimental composer Guillermo Galindo recently created several innovative works at Magnolia Editions for Pacific Standard Time: LA/LA, this year’s Getty-funded exhibition series devoted to Latino and Latin American art. Galindo’s new works will debut as part of an exhibition at the Huntington Library, Art Collections, and Botanical Gardens, exploring “how the depiction of Latin American nature contributed to art and science from the late 1400s to the mid-1800s,” and opening on Sept. 16, 2017. Galindo explains that these works will serve as a commentary and counterpart to the Huntington’s concurrent “Visual Voyages: Images of Latin American Nature from Columbus to Darwin” exhibit.
(http://www.huntington.org/WebAssets/Templates/exhibitiondetail.aspx?id=21610)

Each work in Galindo’s Human Nature: Sonic Botany series consists of a combination of printed aluminum and plexiglas panels, materials chosen for their austere, laboratory-like properties: Galindo notes that the plexiglas suggests the clear plastic slides used to view samples under a microscope. In the two largest works, a layer of translucent plexiglas is printed with manipulated images of microscopic insects or bacteria (and in one case, a secret message in Braille); beneath this layer, a sheet of aluminum is printed with patterns derived from cactus plants. The artist likens this visual strategy to the troubling tendency of corporations to combine plant, insect, and bacterial genomes, creating new species resistant to weather or disease. The paired layers of these works create a shifting, kaleidoscopic sense of movement and visual complexity; each piece appears to change, as if metamorphosing, as the viewer passes by.

The smaller works in the series employ Galindo’s signature graphic ‘scores,’ building on a tradition established by composers such as Sylvano Bussotti, Earl Brown, Cornelius Cardew and John Cage, all of whom blurred the lines between music and visual art. For Galindo, a musical score can be defined as “a set of symbols written on a piece of paper or any other readable surface, to be translated into sound events to be reproduced in real time.” The horizontal landscape format of these works also suggests pre-Columbian codices. One panel features a Braille tribute to environmentalist Ignacio Chapela, who discovered genetic pollution and corporate interference in species of Mexican maize.

Galindo says that these works evoke “mutant jungles,” a comment on the colonization of the microscopic world by corporations. Just as the Spanish colonized the New World, he explains, assigning names to the “new” species they encountered, so do today’s corporate powers use patents to assert their dominance over a world of flora and fauna that is hidden from the naked eye. As the invisible becomes the domain of science – a turn Galindo links to the Greek concepts of mythos and logos, or the overtaking of religious or mythic concepts by reason and science – these works ask us to consider the ways in which contemporary corporations have taken advantage of this shift to manipulate and colonize the territory of the unseen.

-Nick StoneArtist and experimental composer Guillermo Galindo recently created several innovative works at Magnolia Editions for Pacific Standard Time: LA/LA, this year’s Getty-funded exhibition series devoted to Latino and Latin American art. Galindo’s new works will debut as part of an exhibition at the Huntington Library, Art Collections, and Botanical Gardens, exploring “how the depiction of Latin American nature contributed to art and science from the late 1400s to the mid-1800s,” and opening on Sept. 16, 2017. Galindo explains that these works will serve as a commentary and counterpart to the Huntington’s concurrent “Visual Voyages: Images of Latin American Nature from Columbus to Darwin” exhibit.
(http://www.huntington.org/WebAssets/Templates/exhibitiondetail.aspx?id=21610)

Each work in Galindo’s Human Nature: Sonic Botany series consists of a combination of printed aluminum and plexiglas panels, materials chosen for their austere, laboratory-like properties: Galindo notes that the plexiglas suggests the clear plastic slides used to view samples under a microscope. In the two largest works, a layer of translucent plexiglas is printed with manipulated images of microscopic insects or bacteria (and in one case, a secret message in Braille); beneath this layer, a sheet of aluminum is printed with patterns derived from cactus plants. The artist likens this visual strategy to the troubling tendency of corporations to combine plant, insect, and bacterial genomes, creating new species resistant to weather or disease. The paired layers of these works create a shifting, kaleidoscopic sense of movement and visual complexity; each piece appears to change, as if metamorphosing, as the viewer passes by.

The smaller works in the series employ Galindo’s signature graphic ‘scores,’ building on a tradition established by composers such as Sylvano Bussotti, Earl Brown, Cornelius Cardew and John Cage, all of whom blurred the lines between music and visual art. For Galindo, a musical score can be defined as “a set of symbols written on a piece of paper or any other readable surface, to be translated into sound events to be reproduced in real time.” The horizontal landscape format of these works also suggests pre-Columbian codices. One panel features a Braille tribute to environmentalist Ignacio Chapela, who discovered genetic pollution and corporate interference in species of Mexican maize.

Galindo says that these works evoke “mutant jungles,” a comment on the colonization of the microscopic world by corporations. Just as the Spanish colonized the New World, he explains, assigning names to the “new” species they encountered, so do today’s corporate powers use patents to assert their dominance over a world of flora and fauna that is hidden from the naked eye. As the invisible becomes the domain of science – a turn Galindo links to the Greek concepts of mythos and logos, or the overtaking of religious or mythic concepts by reason and science – these works ask us to consider the ways in which contemporary corporations have taken advantage of this shift to manipulate and colonize the territory of the unseen.

Artist and experimental composer Guillermo Galindo recently created several innovative works at Magnolia Editions for Pacific Standard Time: LA/LA, this year’s Getty-funded exhibition series devoted to Latino and Latin American art. Galindo’s new works will debut as part of an exhibition at the Huntington Library, Art Collections, and Botanical Gardens, exploring “how the depiction of Latin American nature contributed to art and science from the late 1400s to the mid-1800s,” and opening on Sept. 16, 2017. Galindo explains that these works will serve as a commentary and counterpart to the Huntington’s concurrent “Visual Voyages: Images of Latin American Nature from Columbus to Darwin” exhibit.
(http://www.huntington.org/WebAssets/Templates/exhibitiondetail.aspx?id=21610)

Each work in Galindo’s Human Nature: Sonic Botany series consists of a combination of printed aluminum and plexiglas panels, materials chosen for their austere, laboratory-like properties: Galindo notes that the plexiglas suggests the clear plastic slides used to view samples under a microscope. In the two largest works, a layer of translucent plexiglas is printed with manipulated images of microscopic insects or bacteria (and in one case, a secret message in Braille); beneath this layer, a sheet of aluminum is printed with patterns derived from cactus plants. The artist likens this visual strategy to the troubling tendency of corporations to combine plant, insect, and bacterial genomes, creating new species resistant to weather or disease. The paired layers of these works create a shifting, kaleidoscopic sense of movement and visual complexity; each piece appears to change, as if metamorphosing, as the viewer passes by.

The smaller works in the series employ Galindo’s signature graphic ‘scores,’ building on a tradition established by composers such as Sylvano Bussotti, Earl Brown, Cornelius Cardew and John Cage, all of whom blurred the lines between music and visual art. For Galindo, a musical score can be defined as “a set of symbols written on a piece of paper or any other readable surface, to be translated into sound events to be reproduced in real time.” The horizontal landscape format of these works also suggests pre-Columbian codices. One panel features a Braille tribute to environmentalist Ignacio Chapela, who discovered genetic pollution and corporate interference in species of Mexican maize.

Galindo says that these works evoke “mutant jungles,” a comment on the colonization of the microscopic world by corporations. Just as the Spanish colonized the New World, he explains, assigning names to the “new” species they encountered, so do today’s corporate powers use patents to assert their dominance over a world of flora and fauna that is hidden from the naked eye. As the invisible becomes the domain of science – a turn Galindo links to the Greek concepts of mythos and logos, or the overtaking of religious or mythic concepts by reason and science – these works ask us to consider the ways in which contemporary corporations have taken advantage of this shift to manipulate and colonize the territory of the unseen.

Experimental composer, sonic architect, and performance artist Guillermo Galindo presents a work inspired by “Visual Voyages” with guest artist/performer Amber Stucke. The program is part of USC Annenberg’s Musical Interventions, a series of public events organized for Pacific Standard Time: LA/LA by Josh Kun, historian of popular music and recently named a MacArthur Fellow. Free with admission.

Desire paths are well-trodden trails created by foot traffic, where the ground becomes imprinted evidence of a place that wants to be discovered, and the people who seek it out. Grab your walking stick for this edition of Desire Trails, where sculptural sound artists—including Wayne Grim and Andy Puls—will tune our ears to a whole new experience of the landscape. Hikers will meet in the Eastwing to briefly study-up on the science of sound before heading out with a map that locates a variety of experiences orchestrated by artists, authors, and scientists who employ analog and electronic sound-generating instruments powered by weather, solar energy, and our own bodies and voices. After two hours of foraying, all hikers will reconvene with fellow (r)amblers in the Mess Hall to enjoy a post-trek meal. This event is family friendly. Learn more.

Walks leave from Main Building 944 at 12PM. The Mess Hall will close at 4PM and meal tickets are limited—we highly recommend you pre-purchase.

RUSK is a chamber music festival held annually in Pietarsaari/Jakobstad, Finland at the end of November. At the heart of this festival embracing superb chamber music and various other genres of the arts is the Schauman Hall in the centre of town, but the events also spread out into the surrounding urban environment.

The festival was founded in 2013 by its Artistic Directors, clarinettist Christoffer Sundqvist and composer Sebastian Fagerlund. In the space of one week, artists both Finnish and foreign give concerts of both chamber music classics and rarities along with contemporary works. Each year, the festival invites a guest of international renown as its focus composer. In 2013 this was Sebastian Fagerlund and in 2014 Daníel Bjarnason.

RUSK seeks to reflect the present day and age with its myriad variations and challenges. It is a melting pot in which creativity is unleashed in exotic contexts at the darkest, bleakest time of the northern year.

Guillermo Galindo (born in Mexico City, Mexico, lives in Oakland) Guillermo synthesizes cultures, creates short circuits that enable a new language of sound, image and sculpture that ignite a sense of humor. His piece, “Ojo”/ “Eye” or “Watch Out” is a bicycle wheel collected from the border which acts as an antenna for a Theremin (an electronic musical instrument controlled without physical contact). The haunting sound emitted by the Theremin coupled with the squeaky tire, create a harmony for the immigrant experience.
Genevieve Hastings has interviewed each artist and recorded stories and insights into their lives and experiences. An audio station for visitors is set up to hear their related stories in conversation with the curator. These conversations are about their experiences in life, their relationship to their work and families and their lives as artists.